Design issues such as thermal considerations should be addressed using specific design guides or application notes for the processor or 845 chipset. These design guidelines have been developed to ensure maximum flexibility for board designers while reducing the risk of board related issues. The design information provided in this document falls into one of the two following categories.• Design Recommendations are items based on Intel’s simulations and lab experience to date and are strongly recommended, if not necessary, to meet timing and signal quality specifications.• Design Considerations are suggestions for platform design that provide one way to meet the design recommendations. They are based on the reference platforms designed by Intel. They should be used as examples, but may not be applicable to particular designs.

Note: In this document “processor” and “Intel® Pentium® 4 processor” refer to the Intel Pentium 4 processor in the 478 pin package.

Note: The guidelines recommended in this document are based on experience and preliminary simulation work performed at Intel while developing Pentium 4 processor and 845 chipset- based systems. This work is ongoing, and the recommendations and considerations are subject to change.

Platform schematics are provided in Appendix A, Customer Reference Board Schematics. The schematics are a reference for board designers. While the schematics may cover a specific design, the core schematics will remain the same for most platforms. The schematic set provides a reference schematic for each platform component as well as common motherboard options. Additional flexibility is possible through other permutations of these options and components.